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Listening to Tom and Cecil right. Funniest guys ever. Cecil’s laughing gets me going everytime that I almost get tears in my eyes. Keep up the great work. I’ll be waiting for the next episode. May Zeus be with you. LOL. 🙂

In a past episode the guys mentioned how the defenders of Roman Polanski were saying that the victim did not want to pursue the case. They mentioned a bunch of reasons why the victim does not and SHOULD NOT get to choose if the perp gets prosecuted.

This episode they talk about how it was the victims choice to report the assult / rape.

Yeah after I posted it and read through again and thought about it some more I came to the same conclusion.
If someone punched me in the face it is really up to me if I want to report it.
Polanski on the other hand had been to court, admitted he was guilty was convicted and then skip out to avoid his punishment. The victim has no say in the punishment phase.

I’m one of those guys who thinks that free speech is one of our most cherished rights and we have to be very careful about how and when we place limitations on it. I would defend somebody’s right to say disparaging things about gay people, black people, or express whatever other distasteful opinions they hold.

But I know that any right must have limitations, and even I don’t think that your right to free speech guarantees your right to harass people.

And it seems really strange that your right to free speech should be determined by how fervently you believe in something. If you’re incredibly sincere you get to have fewer free speech limitations than everybody else? WTF??

I’m completely against laws that require trying to figure out a person’s motives before deciding on the crime. To me, that kind of law seems to be too close to the idea of having “thought crimes” for my comfort.

And that applies equally whether it involves either legal punishment or reward. Because in principle the reward just punishes the people who have committed the “thought crime” of not being sincere enough. (In principle… in practice, anybody could probably claim to be completely sincere enough, and it would be difficult to argue against them)

I just don’t like any law that judges a crime based on a person’s motives. Perhaps there’s some wiggle room for people who are severely mentally imbalanced or challenged, but in the vast majority of cases I think the law should be the same for everybody, and punishment should be based on the crime.

I think that aspect of this law is more alarming than the fact that it’s essentially toothless. Yes, it’s bad enough that they wasted time by making a law that essentially doesn’t do anything that it’s intended to. That’s stupid and crazy and it should be provoking a lot more public outrage.

But I think it’s an even bigger outrage that they’re messing with free speech rights by suggesting that people with the “proper mindset” should have more free speech than other people.

What the hell are they thinking? Free speech is for everybody, it doesn’t matter how sincere you are about what you say. You have the same rights and limitations to your speech that everybody else does! What’s so difficult about this concept for some people?

You talk about the occupy protests over there in America (I’m over here in little, old England), but I don’t know if you’re aware of the protest outside St. Paul’s cathedral in London. It’s about the same thing – the banks robbed us.

However, originally St. Paul’s welcomed the protesters and allowed them to set up tents outside the building – the protesters wanted to camp outside a stock exchange building I think, but couldn’t for some reason.
Now though, the people running St. Paul’s have gotten fed up and want the protesters to move away.

Just wanted to know what you guys thought about this. Should the church be involved in these protests? Are they allowed to tell people to go away?

Hello fellas, I know you guys normally concentrate on news items and whatnot (which I thoroughly enjoy!), but at some point, it would be interesting to me (and perhaps others) if you went into your personal “de-conversion” stories. It might be cool to hear about the thought processes you each went through to come the realization that there isn’t a higher, over-arching “intelligence” running this whole show. Just a thought… 🙂

You guys will probably be talking about this on the next episode, but I just heard Cain’s latest alleged sexual harassment victim’s account of what happened.

Apparently, she appealed to him directly for a job. He met her for drinks, upgraded her hotel room for her, treated her to dinner, and as the evening was winding down she says she was surprised when he attempted to grope her.

Of course, I’m not defending his actions… but how naive do you have to be in order for this course of events to take you by surprise?

You’ve come to the man for a favour. He wines you, dines you, and upgrades your hotel room. Throughout all this, it never occurs to you that he may not be just doing this out of the goodness of his heart?

“MISTER CAIN!!! I am shocked… SHOCKED that you had more on your mind throughout all this than just offering a poor girl a job!”

Dumbass, I totally get what you’re saying, but it kind of eeks me out because that train of thought isn’t that far off from “Well, she was wearing a mini-skirt, so she was asking for it.” In my opinion, I guess I don’t think it should matter if he bought her dinner or not, unless she and he decided to engage in consensual sexual behavior, him groping her (if indeed it happened) is harassment. Again, this is just my opinion though.

Well, certainly there’s no excuse for persistently making unwanted advances. And in any case, the intention to give a woman a job in exchange for sexual favors is pretty sleazy.

But I almost can’t blame him for thinking it was consensual. She came to him asking for a job, and he was very clearly doting on her in a more than businesslike fashion.

I think most women would have realized what was going on and either acquiesced if they were the kind of girl who would do that, or made it clear that they were uncomfortable with the direction the evening was going.

In either case, I find it pretty funny that she was actually surprised that he made a move on her. It sounds to me like he’s just a sleaze who misread the situation, and according to her account he stopped immediately when she asked him to.

But that doesn’t let him off the hook. If the story is true, it still definitely shows him to be a sleazeball.

There was a ridiculously stupid story on the local Milwaukee WI channel last night…I’m not exaggerating when I write they promoted this using language very similar to “This will kill you! 1 in 4 families exposed to this super bug!” (typical ratings grab because they had no hard data in the segment on TV)…at any rate, it did make think of the role the media plays in freaking people out for no good reason and with a lack of actual facts…made me think of the AIDs scare back in the 80s — remember you could “catch it” from toilet seats, drinking fountains etc. Here’s the link to the story if anyone is interested: http://www.todaystmj4.com/features/specialassignment/133586083.html

I’d better put some context in place for that clip!
A number of years ago, British comic Marc Wootton came up with a “Psychic” character called Shirley Ghostman, and devised a show where Shirley would perform a spiritualist routine in front of an unknowing audience. The show was called “High Spirits”
One of Shirley’s cohorts was Ian Jackson, featured in the clip.
Like Shirley’s audience, the rumpologist and the woman flashing her butt have no idea that the whole thing is a piss take.

High Spirits was one of the best skeptical series I’ve seen on British tv in years, but it had pretty low viewing figures. When Marc appeared on the Jonathan Ross show (The UK’s most popular talk show at the time) in the persona of Shirley, not everyone in the audience, or watching at home, realised that he was a fictional character; and when Shirley started talking about Jews, Hitler, cancer patients, and how his uncle “ectoplasmed” all over him when he was a little boy, not everyone got the joke. There were a huge amount of complaints and “High Spirits” was cancelled.